STC (My­co­log­i­cal Di­vi­sion) Goes to the Movies

by Elio

You may have seen the movie Phan­tom Thread. Star­ring Daniel Day-Lewis, it got six nom­i­na­tions for Acad­emy awards. And it deals with mush­rooms, some­thing that doesn't hap­pen in movies very much.

Here's the plot, in brief. A Lon­don cou­turier who sews for the up­per classes gets into a ro­man­tic re­lationship with a younger woman. In time, trou­ble en­sues, and she de­cides that in or­der to keep him un­der her con­trol, it would be a good idea to feed him poi­so­nous mush­rooms. In his sick­ened state, he surely would be­come more tractable. Un­der the tute­lage of an el­derly woman, she goes out on the grounds of their sum­mer es­tate to pick some mush­rooms. Af­ter con­sult­ing a book, she cooks them up and serves them in a tea to her para­mour. He vom­its up a storm, then col­lapses at an in­con­ve­nient time as he works on a dress for a Bel­gian princess. In the process, he dam­ages it, re­quir­ing his staff to work on it all night to fix it. He must take to bed, where he has a vi­sual hallu­cination of his long-de­parted mother stand­ing near him. The ef­fects of the mush­room work so well that as time passes, a new treat­ment is called for. Back she goes and picks more mush­rooms and, for a change, cooks them up in an omelet. This time, he eats them know­ingly. The movie ends.

Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis in Phan­tom Thread. By Lau­rie Sparham/Courtesy of Fo­cus Fea­tures. Source

If I had been asked about the use of poi­so­nous mush­rooms for this pur­pose, I might have said that it could work, but it is chancy. It would help if the per­pe­tra­tor knew how to dis­tin­guish the de­sired mush­room from oth­ers. Be­sides, any mush­rooms species is found at cer­tain times of the year only and un­der the right wea­ther con­di­tions. Also, the looked-for species bet­ter be com­mon in the lo­cal­ity.

But what was the iden­tity of the mush­room in the movie? Given the symp­toms, which in­clude se­vere nau­sea and vom­it­ing, fol­lowed by pros­tra­tion and hal­lu­ci­na­tions, the choices seem lim­ited. What comes to mind is Amanita mus­caria, the red-capped white dot­ted fly agaric that pro­duces a va­ri­ety of symp­toms, the present ones in­cluded. It is com­mon in Great Britain and eas­ily rec­og­niz­able. How­ever, that's not it. A very short clip in the movie shows that the mush­room had gills that were brown in color, whereas tho­se of A. mus­caria are white. We are left with few choices. A num­ber of poi­so­nous brown-gilled mush­rooms may ac­count for some of the symp­toms, but species that gen­er­ate this par­tic­u­lar ar­ray are not com­mon.

So, is the mush­room in the movie an in­ven­tion of the di­rec­tor? Why not? The plot is pretty fan­ci­ful, so why not a bit of my­co­log­i­cal li­cense? I sup­pose that poi­so­nous mush­rooms may have been used with the in­ten­tion of al­ter­ing hu­man re­la­tions, but if the pur­pose is to make one's part­ner sick, surely there are more fool­proof ways to achieve this. Leave the mush­rooms be!